Trump to nominate Scott Brown as ambassador to New Zealand

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that he plans to tap former state and U.S. Sen. Scott Brown to serve as the United States ambassador to New Zealand.

Brown would have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The role is at least the second in the administration for which Brown has been considered. He previously met with Trump to discuss the job of veterans affairs secretary. Since leaving Massachusetts after losing his U.S. Senate seat to Elizabeth Warren in 2012, Brown became a contributor to Fox News and ran an unsuccessful campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from his new home in New Hampshire.

Brown worked on Trump's campaign and took to Twitter the day after Trump's victory to take credit for being the "1st present or past federal official to endorse" the president-elect. Like Trump, Brown scored his own shocking upset when in 2009 he ran a special election campaign for the U.S. Senate that was initially given little chance of winning. He instead surged to defeat then-Attorney General Martha Coakley.

In announcing his nomination as ambassador, the White House noted that Brown won "the special election for Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat," though Brown famously rejected that label and declared it "the people's seat."